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AMERICANS OF GERMAN ORIGIN 
AND THE WAR 



EXTRACTS 



FROM AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE MERCHANTS 

ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK, AT ITS LIBERTY 

LOAN MEETING, HELD ON JUNE 1, 1917 



B\ 



OTTO H. KAHN 




PRESENTED BY MR. SUTHERLAND 

August 15 (calendar day AUGUST 22), 1917.— Referred to 
the Committee on Printing 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1917 



^' 






SENATE RESOLUTION NO. 123. 

(Reported by Mr. Fletcher.] 



In the Senate of the United States, 

September 11, 1917. 
Resolved, That the pamphlet submitted by the Senator from West 
Virginia (Mr. Sutherland) on August 22, 1917, entitled "Americans 
of German Origin and the War," extracts from an address before 
the Merchants Association of New York, by Otto H. Kahn, be 
printed as a Senate document. 
Attest: 

James M. Baker, Secretary. 
2 

D. Of D. 
SEP 28 1917 



AMERICANS OF GERMAN ORIGIN AND THE WAR, 



[Extracts from an address before the Merchants Association of New York at its liberty- 
loan meeting June 1, 1917.] 



We have met to-day in pursuance of a high purpose, a purpose 
which at this fateful moment is one and the same wherever, through- 
out the world, the language of free men is spoken and understood. 

It is the purpose of a common determination to fight and to bear 
and to dare everything and never to cease nor rest until the accursed 
thing which has brought upon the world the unutterable calamity, 
the devil's visitation of this appalling war, is destroyed beyond all 
possibility of resurrection. 

That accursed thing is not a nation, but an evil spirit, a spirit 
which has made the government possessed by it and executing its 
abhorrent and bloody bidding an abomination in the sight of God 
and men. 

What we are now contending for by the side of our splendidly 
brave and sorely tried allies, after infinite forbearance, after delay 
which many of us found it hard to bear, are the things which are 
amongst the highest and most cherished that the civilized world 
has attained through the toil, sacrifices and suffering of its best in 
the course of many centuries. 

They are the things without which darkness would fall upon hope, 
and life would become intolerable. 

They are the things of humanity, liberty, justice, and mercy, for 
which the best men amongst all the nations — including the German 
nation — have fought and bled these many generations past, which 
were the ideals of Luther, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, and a host of others 
who had made the name of Germany great and beloved until fanatical 
Prussianism run amuck came to make its deeds a by-word and a 
hissing. 

This appalling conflict which has been drenching the world with 
blood is not a mere fight of one or more peoples against one or more 
other peoples. 

It goes far deeper. 

It sharply divides the soul and conscience of the world. 

It transcends vastly the bounds of racial allegiance. 

It is ethically fundamental. 

In determining one's attitude toward it, the time has gone by — 
if it ever was — when race and blood and inherited affiliations were 
permitted to count. 

A century and a half ago Americans of Enghsh birth rose to free 
this country from the oppression of the rulers of England. To-day 
Americans of German birth are called upon to rise, together with 



4 AMEEICANS OF GERMAN ORIGIN AND THE WAR. 

their fellow-citizens of all races, to free not only this country but 
the whole world from the oppression of the rulers of Germany, an 
oppression far less capable of being endured and of far graver portent. 
Speaking as one born of German parents, I do not hesitate to 
state it as my deep conviction that the greatest service which men 
of German birth or antecedents can render to the country of their 
origin is to proclaim, and to stand up for those great and fine ideals 
and national qualities and traditions which they inherited from 
their ancestors, and to set their faces like flint against the monstrous 
doctrines and acts of a rulership which have robbed them of the 
Germany which they loved and in which they took just pride, the 
Germany which had the good will, respect, and admiration of the 
entire world. 

I do not hesitate to state it as my solemn conviction that the more 
unmistakably and whole-heartedly Americans of German origin throw 
themselves into the struggle which this country has entered in order 
to rescue Germany, no less than America and the rest of the world 
from those sinister forces that are, in President Wilson's language, 
the enemy of all mankind, the better they protect and serve the 
repute of the old German name and the true advantage of the German 
people. 

Gentlemen, I measure my words. Tliey are borne out all too 
emphatically by the hideous eloquence of deeds which have appalled 
the conscience of the civilized world. They are borne out by num- 
berless expressions, written and spoken, of German professors 
employed by the State to teach its youth. 

The burden of that teaching is that might makes ridit, and that 
the German nation has been chosen to exercise morally, mentally, 
and actually, the overlordship of the world and must and will accom- 
plish that task and that destiny whatever the cost in bloodshed, 
misery, and ruin. 

The spirit of that teaching, in its intolerance, its mixture of sancti- 
moniousness and covetousness and its self-righteous assumption of 
a world-improving mission, is closely akin to the spirit from which 
were bred the rehgious wars of the past tlu-ough the long and dark 
years when Protestants and Catholics killed one another and devas- 
tated Europe. 

I speak in sorrow, for I am speaking of the country of my origin 
and I have not forgotten what I owe to it. 

I speak in bitter disappointment, for I am thinking of the Germany 
of former days, the Germany which has contributed its full share to 
the store of the world's imperishable assets and which, in not a few 
fields of human endeavor and achievement held the leading place 
among the nations of the earth. 

And I speak in the firm faith that, after its people shall have 
shaken off and made atonement for the dreadful spell which an 
evil fate has cast upon them, that former Germany is bound to arise 
again and, in due course of time, will again deserve and attain the 
good-will and the high respect of the world and the affectionate 
loyalty of all those of German blood in foreign lands. 

But I know that neither Germany nor this country nor the rest 
of the world can return to happiness and peace and fruitful labor 
until it shall have been made manifest, bitterly and unmistakably 



AMERICANS OF GERMAN" ORIGIN AND THE WAR. 5 

manifest, to the rulers who bear the blood-guilt for this wanton war 
and to their misinformed and misguided peoples that the spirit 
which unchained it can not prevail, that the hateful doctrines and 
methods in pursuance of which and in comphance with which it is 
conducted are rejected with abhorrence by the civihzed world, and 
that the overweening ambitions which it was meant to serve can 
never be achieved. 

The fight for civilization which we all fondly believed had been 
won many years ago must be fought over again. In this sacred 
struggle it is now our privilege to take no mean part, and our glory 
to bring sacrifices. 

Our one and supreme job, the one purpose to which all others must 
give way, is to bring this war to a successful conclusion. One of the 
means toward that end is to make the hberty loan a veritable tri- 
umph, an overwhelming expression of our gigantic economic strength. 

To accomplish that, let each one of us feel himself personally 
responsible; let each one of us work as if our life depended on the 
result. And, in a very real sense, does not our national life and our 
individual life depend on the outcome of this war ? 

Would life be tolerable if the power of Prussianism, run mad and 
murderous, held the world by the throat, if the primacy of the earth 
belonged to a Government steeped in the doctrines of a barbarous 
past and supported by a ruling caste which preaches the deification 
of sheer might, which despises liberty, hates democracy, and would 
destroy both if it could ? 

To that spirit and to those doctrines we, citizens of America and 
servants, as such, of humanity, wiU oppose our solemn and unshak- 
able resolution "to make the world safe for democracy," and we will 
say with a clear conscience, in the noble words which more than 500 
years ago were uttered by the Parhament of Scotland: "It is not 
for glory or for riches or for honor that we fight, but for liberty alone, 
which no good man loses but with his life." 

o 



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